Sally's
Journal
September 2007
The summer has seen the publication of PRINCESS PIP'S
I'm thrilled that THE TRUTH SAYER has been short-listed for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. Hurray again!
I've been working on the third TRUTH SAYER book, which hasn't got a proper title yet, but which is called MONDAY MONDAY at the moment. I've also been finishing off a book set in 1951, which is called MOVING OUT, and writing a short version of Jonathan Swift's GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. These should be published next year.
I've also had the great pleasure of talking about Cold Tom in the very woods where the Tribe live - and, as a bonus, discovering that one of the audience is now growing up in my old house, and has the bedroom I had as a child.
Small world!
But full of wonders. Here's a White Ermine moth pretending to be dead!
April 2007
Spring is sprung and the grass is rizzing all over the place. Brimstones (the really genuine butterflies - because they're bright yellow, like butter) are fluttering by quite often. There are newts in the pond, their bellies egg yolk yellow with bold leopard-black spots. The robin has found a mate, and the green woodpeckers are laughing.
I'm busy knitting together the holes in The Truth Sayer: March of the Owlmen. My brilliant editor, Liz Cross, has helpfully pointed out several places where things don't quite fit together as well as they might, so I'm doing some mending while hoping that it doesn't make the whole book unravel.
Lovely visit to the Suffolk Book Mastermind Final on March 23rd. All the finalists were scarily knowledgeable, and we wrote a couple of exciting stories about evil rulers. Congratulations to the contestants on their bravery, as well as knowing lots of stuff.
Two new editions of Cold Tom will be coming out soon: a school edition with a mysterious figure moving through a starlit wood on the cover, and a bookshop edition, featuring a very beautiful and arresting photograph of Tom. All the girls (and librarians) at the Suffolk Book Mastermind Final took one look at him, and said phwoar!
November 2006
1. Back from visits to
2. This has been the year of the immigrant on the little bit of Common at
the back of the garden. So far we have spotted: an edible dormouse (well, we
actually spotted it in our airing cupboard: we wondered what had been
eating the placemats); a wasp spider (ancestors from France); a Cypress Carpet
moth (first for Hertfordshire, hurray!); a Silver-Washed Fritillary (almost
extinct in Hertfordshire); an (originally Australian) Light Brown Apple Moth,
and, most recently, flying over, being mobbed by crows, a Red Kite.
The above list, of course, does not include regular migrants such as Swifts,
Hummingbird Hawkmoths and Red Admirals.
And I say to myself...
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